Newark Mayor Cory Booker yesterday announced plans to immediately cut crime by pouring cops and social services into violent hot spots around the city.

In his first policy announcement as mayor, Booker said his "Safe Summer Initiative" aims to do two things: crack down on crime and provide more recreation, job training, entertainment and other activities to improve the health of neighborhoods.

"Too many Newark residents live in a state of domestic terror, where they're afraid to walk out of their homes, to walk down their streets, to go outside and visit their local store," Booker said.

The goal, he said, is "to immediately take back our streets during this hot summertime."

Booker unveiled his new program at a news conference at West Side Park that included law enforcement officials, politicians and a display of expensive new police equipment.

He called the two prongs of his plan "discipline" and "love," in which criminals will be punished and struggling people -- drug addicts, jobless youth, poor families and ex-cons looking to turn around their lives -- will get the help they need to stay out of trouble.

The program starts this weekend and will end Sept. 7, when the new school year begins. At that point, Booker said he will start another initiative aimed at school safety.

Crime fighting was Booker's top issue as a mayoral candidate, and he has long promised to put more cops on the street.

Booker boasted that since his inauguration Saturday, crime has dropped 50 percent; a police spokesman later explained the mayor was comparing crime statistics from Monday and Tuesday with the previous Monday and Tuesday.

Booker thanked the city council for pledging to provide the money he needed to pay overtime to the "dozens and dozens" of extra police officers he's putting on the streets. But the mayor didn't say how much that would be, and Council President Mildred Crump said she was not able to get that information yesterday.

The hot spots in Booker's new program are places all over the city that are notorious for violent crime. His staff handed out a map of 16 spots, dubbed "safe zones," which included small streets, like Stratford Place, and several public housing complexes.

But Booker said there will really be about 30 spots, many of which will remain secret so criminals won't see police coming.

In an interview after the news conference, Booker said he wanted to be held accountable at summer's end to cutting the crime rates, particularly homicides, in each of those areas. But his staff yesterday did not provide the current crime rates for those areas.

This year's results will be used as benchmarks for a similar initiative in summer 2007, Booker said.

Booker said his plan depended on cooperation from federal, county and local police agencies, including those from towns that border Newark, to make "a complete wall of security."

"There's a new spirit that is alive in Newark, New Jersey, and that spirit is unity," he said.

The initiative's community prong will be lead by Modia Butler, executive director of Newark Now, a nonprofit organization founded by Booker.